ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701060074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN JOSE, CALIF.
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Daniel Dwight Lewis has been convicted of nothing more than burglary and fraud, but police say he has proved to be quite a fugitive, living on the lam for nearly three decades after escaping from a Virginia prison in 1969.
He had some scrapes with the law, even went to prison under a fake name, but police never knew they had their man.
On Monday, though, the 50-year-old Lewis came across Palo Alto police officer Jeff Mock and Mock's sixth sense - and the fugitive's luck ran dry.
Lewis was arrested after a routine traffic stop on Embarcadero Road, closing the book on the longest active escape from Lorton federal prison in Virginia. ``It feels good to get him back,'' said John Marshall, a U.S. marshal for the eastern district of Virginia.
Mock was patrolling the streets looking for drunken drivers as part of the holiday anti-drinking program about 7 p.m. Monday when he saw Lewis swerving while driving east on Embarcadero. Mock said he became suspicious when Lewis said he had no identification.
Then the first name he gave didn't come up on the police computer, forcing Mock to spend 30 minutes going back and forth on the issue, he said.
``That's when he blurted out, `I escaped from a prison 27 years ago,''' Mock said. ``After that he was pretty cooperative about the whole thing.''
The outlaw tale began April 25, 1969, when Lewis, who was serving time for a probation violation for burglary, escaped from Lorton, Marshall said. Although he had not committed a capital crime, the distinction of being a federal escapee put Lewis atop the list of wanted felons in the state of Virginia.
Mock said that after Lewis knew he was caught, he told Mock that he had been stopped and questioned by police numerous times during his fugitive years.
``He told me he just used a different name and no one bothered to check,'' Mock said.
Marshall said Lewis even got away with the name scam when he was arrested in Arizona and sent to state prison on a fraud conviction in 1972. He did about a year - under the name of Jonathan Younger - but not long enough for authorities to realize he was the Virginia fugitive.
Lewis is being held by the U.S. marshal's office until a bond hearing Monday.
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